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Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land
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About This Book
Longlisted for the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionThis dazzling, innovative family memoir tells the story of a long-lost plan to create a Jewish state in Texas.On June 7, 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamed, but to Texas. The man who persuades the passengers to go is David Jochelmann, Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather. The journey marks the beginning of the Galveston Movement, a forgotten moment in history when ten thousand Jews fled to Texas in the leadup to World War I.The charismatic leader of the movement is Jochelmann's closest friend, Israel Zangwill, whose novels have made him famous across Europe and America. As Eastern Europe becomes infected by antisemitic violence, Zangwill embarks on a desperate search for a temporary homeland—from Australia to Canada, Angola to Antarctica—before reluctantly settling on Galveston. He fears the Jewish people will be absorbed into the great American melting pot, but there is no other hope.In a highly inventive style, Cockerell captures history as it unfolds, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews into a vivid account. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York, and Jerusalem—as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history or melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past.
Reviews
"Cockerell's unique approach raises questions about the role of the biographer or historian, grappling with sifting what's important in an already selective record ..."
"These voices are coaxed by Cockerell, who has a keen ear and fine sense of timing, into becoming some of recent literature's most compelling narrators ..."
"She channels grand speeches and on-the-ground reporting, she favors outrageous voices, and she resists hierarchy ..."
"But if this book is not a perfectly structured whole, the sum of its parts adds up to an innovative and immediate account of a story that has world-historical significance."
"Readers will be enthralled."
"Yet she pulls it off with verve."
"If the book has a limitation, it's that the reader is left wondering what happened to the Galveston families; the documentary record is silent ..."
"The radical implications of Cockerell's narrative sneak up on you."
"Blends a history of Zionism with that of her family, and makes for a richly elegaic read"
"An exceptionally vivid and compelling family history."
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